Stokes-vector direct detection for optical communications

Abstract

To cope with the exponential growth of the Internet traffic, optical communications has advanced by leaps and bounds. For several decades, Intensity modulation with direct detection (IM-DD) dominates the commercial short-reach optical communications. However, when upgrading the data-rate distance product to 1000 Gb/s·km per wavelength and beyond, IM-DD faces severe performance barrier. Aiming to improve the electrical SE and extend the transmission distance, advanced DD modulation formats have been proposed through a so-called self-coherent (SCOH) approach, where a carrier is transmitted together with the signal to achieve a linear mapping between the electrical baseband signal and the optic..